Welcome 2023! Welcome Issue 1 of 32!
Authors: Uta Göbel
Journal: Advanced Healthcare Materials (2023)

It is that time of year again in late November/early December when I get the task of writing this Editorial for the first issue of the next year. And, as usual, since I took on the role as editor-in-chief for Advanced Healthcare Materials (AHM), I am sitting here in front of a white page, thinking about what I should write. After the 10th anniversary activities in the two previous years, AHM is now more and more back to business as usual, trying to cope with an increasing number of submissions every day, and providing you with a consistent service throughout. The biggest change for the journal is currently happening with this editorial included in the first issue of 32 issues this year. So, we are increasing frequency from 24 issues per year to 32, giving space to publish even more great research in the journal. When reflecting on 2022, the biggest change in general was the reappearance of conferences. After the long time of only virtual events, I had the pleasure to finally interact with the community again. Most notably, in 2022 I attended my first Gordon Conference (GRC), i.e., the GRC Signal Transduction by Engineered Extracellular Matrices (STEEM), in July. I am extremely grateful that Claudia Loebel and Woojin Han invited me to participate in the adjacent Gordon Research Seminar (GRS) where I was able to participate in a career session to talk about how I have grown into the editor I am today. The conferences I attended reminded me a lot about what I enjoy most about this job: not only interacting with (electronic) papers, but in the end working with people. In addition, there are several AHM updates that should not go unnoticed: Once again, the journal has published a few special issues. This year I amindebted to our previous editorial board chair, Younan Xia, who organized two special issues last year acknowledging two true pioneers in the biomaterials field: Nicholas Peppas and Buddy Ratner. See issues 7, published in April 2022, and co-edited by Kristi Anseth (https://www.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/21922659/2022/11/7), and issue 9 in May 2022 (https://www.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/21922659/2022/11/9). As we also see in our regular submissions, the use of engineered extracellular vesicles in the context of biomaterials research is also a growing field. Therefore I am super happy that Ulrike Kauscher-Pinto (AHM editor) managed to motivate Juliane Nguyen (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) and Gregor Fuhrmann (Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nürnberg) to edit a special issue on “Extracellular Vesicles: A Versatile Biomaterial”—see issue 5 in March 2022 (https://www.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/21922659/2022/11/5). In addition, Gregory A. Hudalla (University of Florida, Gainesville) edited a small collection of articles on “Medical Applications of Glycomaterials”—see in issue 4, February 2022, https://www.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/21922659/2022/11/4. The last issue of 2022 (issue 24 in December) was also a special issue on “Biofabrication Applications”, edited by Yu Suk Choi (The University of Western Australia, Perth), Khoon Lim (University of Sydney) and Jelena Rnjak-Kovacina (University of New South Wales, Sydney) (https://www.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/21922659/2022/11/24). The power of biofabrication methods and now up-and-coming applications continue to be one of my favorite topics we publish in this journal (Figure 1). Last year we also restructured AHM's editorial board, to follow the lead of the other Advanced journals. Thus, the journal now has a two-tiered editorial board, with 16 Executive Advisory Board (EAB) members and a larger International Advisory Board (IAB). We are very happy that Bin Liu (National University Singapore) joined the EAB, and Chunying Chen (National Center for Nanoscience and Technology, Beijing), Lola Eniola-Adefeso (University of Michigan), Xiaohong Fang (Institute of Basic Medicine and Cancer, Chinese Academy of Sciences Beijing), Eileen Gentleman (King's College London), Zhen Gu (Zhejiang University), Yanglong Hou (Peking University), Tatiana Segura (Duke University) and Tim Woodfield (University of Otago) have joined our IAB. See our full editorial board here: https://www.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/page/journal/21922659/homepage/2087_edbd.html I am also happy to see the success of the other health/bio journals in the Advanced family: Advanced Therapeutics, with editor-in-chief Christine Mayer and deputy editor David Huesmann, as well as Advanced NanoBiomed Research, led by AHM deputy editor Irem Bayindir-Buchhalter. Advanced Therapeutics continues to grow and establish itself in the field to publish translational research for next generation therapeutics, also beyond biomaterials and nanomedicine. Advanced NanoBiomed Research, our premium Open Access journal in the biomaterials space, has a strong focus on applications and will be an important voice for translating nanomedicine and biomedicine research into the clinic. The impact factor is only a number … and certainly not a perfect one, as we all know. Yet, the yearly release of the Impact Factor is a moment to pause and thank the ones contributing to the success of a journal. Thanks to our authors publishing with us, thanks to the reviewers maintaining our journal quality, and thanks to the whole Advanced Healthcare Materials editorial team! And with this I start my traditional round of thanks for this year, first introducing the growing team of people working on the journal: I am happy to continue to work with my deputy editor team, Irem Bayindir-Buchhalter (based at the Weinheim office in Germany), Conor Doss (working from Baltimore in the USA) and Jing Zhu (working from Shanghai, China). This year we welcome a few new (and recurring) members of the peer review editorial team, and I am happy to work with Alanna Gannon (working from Boston, USA), Anne Pfisterer (in Weinheim) and Flóra Kiss (based in Berlin, Germany). Emily Hu (working from Beijing, China) and Ulrike Kauscher Pinto (currently on maternity leave in the Weinheim area) and Xi Wen (in Shanghai) continue to work on the journal. I am also super grateful that Kieran Schlegel-O'Brien continues to be our post-acceptance editor and manages to coordinate all those beautiful cover suggestions and making sure everything is published on time. Ihsan Amin has also joined the post-acceptance team and is further supported by Julia Abel-Ranzinger. All of them are based at the Weinheim office. This year AHM also had to say goodbye to our lead admin, Melanie Rettenmaier, who was with the journal from its launch. Luckily Melanie is still working within the department and not far out of reach. In the meantime, Katie Lally was taking care of the AHM admin tasks and now Paulina Noack (based in our Berlin office) and Alexandra Harris Gunn (Weinheim) are your main contact persons when you are trying to reach our editorial office. Last but not least, I am happy to have Christine Herth (in Weinheim) on board as our production editor, as without her, nothing would be published. Ultimately, as usual, I want to thank all our authors, trusting us to publish their hard work, as well as the reviewers for helping us maintain our high publication standards and serving the biomaterials community in this way. Thus, looking back at all of those activities in 2022, I am surprised to see how easy it was to fill these empty pages. I am hoping this is also true for yourself, when writing up your theses, grant applications, and your next paper you plan to submit to Advanced Healthcare Materials. Have a happy and healthy 2023! Uta Göbel, Editor-in-Chief